As with most big-time sporting events, much of the draw of the NBA Finals is rooting against somebody. Hey, the Yankees, Cowboys and Duke aren’t ratings bonanzas just because they have huge fan bases. It’s also because so many tune in lusting for them to lose.

So it is for the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Or more specifically, LeBron James and the pairing of Clay Bennett and Aubrey McClendon.

Rooting against LeBron, of course, continues to be a growth industry. The reasons remain the same today since his move to Miami. That’s old news.

As for Bennett and McClendon, the names aren’t as instantly recognizable, but anyone whose sense of basketball history extends beyond “The Decision” knows who they are, and what they did.

The beloved, youthful, frisky Thunder? Because of those two (and a disturbing number of co-conspirators), they are not the beloved, youthful, frisky Seattle SuperSonics.

It’s just starting to grow on everybody that as much beef as Cleveland and the rest of the network of anti-LeBron cells have with these Finals, Seattle and those who genuinely miss that city’s presence in the NBA are just as testy.

Whatever pain LeBron might have caused two years ago, multiply it by a few thousand and you’ll grasp the pain felt in Seattle, and among those who sympathize with them, over what happened two years before that.

They got robbed.

It doesn’t reflect on the current players or management, on Kevin Durant or Scott Brooks or Sam Presti; or on Oklahoma City itself, which committed no sin except proving itself as a worthy home to an NBA franchise, and being co-owner McClendon’s hometown.

They were all innocent bystanders. It makes the bitterness complicated. Durant is as easy to root for as any athlete in sports today. Rooting for his team is excruciatingly problematic.

None of this went unnoticed in the days preceding and following the Thunder’s win over the San Antonio Spurs last week that clinched the Finals berth. The psychic scream that came out of Seattle as the final seconds ticked down reverberated all over the country.

It sounded familiar—the same sound came from Cleveland a year earlier when Miami won the East.

Longtime NBA followers immediately filled up cyberspace with condolences for Seattle, which did the league proud over its 41 years as a member. They rebelled against short-sighted mentions of how it was the Thunder’s “first NBA Finals trip,” reminding one and all of the three Seattle teams that went and the one, in 1979, that brought home the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

Reporters descended on Seattle to chronicle the outrage, the people pledging not to watch a second of the Finals, the hole left by the ripping away of the city’s first major-league team, the absence of their own records and history because they now belong to the Thunder ... and the futility of contemplating it all.

In the history of ugly franchise moves, this one was near the top. It’s hard to find a case of arena/stadium blackmail as blatant, transparent and calculated, or to find a fan base left behind as conflicted—without a team, but with doubts about the wisdom of handing over public money to billionaires who demand it.

It hasn’t been nearly enough time for anybody to forget, never mind forgive.

David Stern is as much of an outcast in Seattle as Roger Goodell is in New Orleans. The names of Bennett and McClendon are profanities, as is that of Howard Schultz, the former Sonics owner who sold the team to them.

And now, the team that was at Square One of trying to rebuild when it got snatched away, has seen the rebuilding pay off ... in another city just a few years later.

Seattle, naturally, has turned into the greatest hotbed of Heat fans anywhere (likely including Miami, actually). Someone even came up with a logo to express that support. To repeat, Cleveland ... sound familiar?

The lessons from all of this, then?

One: Don’t make silly claims that “everybody wants LeBron to lose.” One city loves him and his team as if they’re its own—now that it doesn’t have its own anymore.

Two: This time, picking against whom to root is never as easy as it seems.